Positives for India from New Zealand Test Series, from the eyes of MS Dhoni

One of the most important roles of a journalist is to think on behalf of others and credit them to sources. We do the both here as our sources tell what Indian captain MS Dhoni thinks about the recently concluded tour of New Zealand. He finds many positives, here are a few of them:

1. Suresh Raina: I feel Raina to be the biggest positive from the test series. This test series is testimony to the fact that he has completely overcome his short ball problem as he didn’t get to one even once. (Dhoni chose to ignore when pointed it happened because Raina didn’t play a single test.)

2. Rohit Sharma: In 4 innings Rohit Sharma got out to duck only once, scores in other 3 innings notwithstanding. That’s a marked improvement from earlier days when Rohit had the talent and caliber to get out on duck in 5 out of 4 innings.

“India only always takes positives from their overseas tours. Hope some day they will take the trophy with the positives as well.” Source: Cricinfo

3. Ishant Sharma: Not only did he take wickets (in just one innings), which was over and above what is expected of him, he also grew as a bowler. He is staking claim to become the lead bowler for the team which can be seen with how he confidently takes on his senior Zaheer Khan.

4. R Ashwin: By losing the test series despite Ashwin’s exclusion from playing 11, we proved we don’t need his services to perform pathetically overseas. We have a good bench strength and are quite capable of losing games without him as well.

5. Bowling Attack: We lost the series to a team whose bowling attack wasn’t lethal. This proves Indian batsman can fare as badly against a pedestrian bowling attack as a strong one. So critics should shut up and stop pointing fingers at Indian batsmen for failing against top quality fast bowling.

6. Ravindra Jadeja: We once again proved that Sir Jadeja’s form and wizardry is very essential for our success. His failure in both matches proves it.

7. Virat Kohli: He didn’t lose his temper even once. Not even after dropping Mc Cullum’s catch when he was at 9 or after looking at Murali Vijay’s performance or his remorseless face.

8. Boosting New Zealand’s morale: We gave an 8th ranked team like New Zealand the belief that they can beat the best of the best team in cricket. I am sure besides their ranking their spirits have also gone up.

9. Bookies: Bookies would have termed us favorites and bet huge money on our victory, but in our bid to fight this menace called fixing and betting we didn’t let it happen. Bookies stand defeated today and we are proud.

10. Pitch and conditions: On a personal level, I think its quite an achievement from my side to not blame pitches and conditions even once during the tour. I think I have grown as an excuser captain.

11. Warm up for IPL: It was a nice practice and warm up for Indian team specially CSK players to get used to overseas conditions and green/fast pitches since IPL could be shifted to South Africa to avoid clash with elections in India.